How to use World Cup to teach your children about money
By Dan Kauna, June 10, 2026The 2026 FIFA World Cup is already the richest tournament in history, with a prize pool of USD1 billion (approximately Ksh129 billion) shared among 48 competing nations.
For most of us, that figure is almost too large to picture. But for your children, aged eight to 16, it’s a number that lands because they already care about football.
Research published in Frontiers in Education in 2024 found that “incorporating real-life financial scenarios and experiential learning into educational content significantly enhances the effectiveness of these programmes” and better prepares young people for the financial decisions they will face as adults.
The World Cup, happening right now, is as real-life as it gets.
Start with the prize money
When your child sees their favourite team celebrate a win, ask them one question: do you know how much that victory is worth?
FIFA pays every team a group stage fee just for qualifying, and the amounts climb steeply with every round. The champions take home USD125 million (Ksh16 billion).
From there, the conversation practically runs itself. What does a country do with that money? Does it go to the players? Does it stay with the football association? Is it taxed? You don’t have to know all the answers, looking them up together is the whole point.
For older children (13 to 16), you can go deeper with the transfer market. A player like Kylian Mbappé carries a market valuation that is publicly tracked and discussed.
There’s a live lesson in there on how value is assessed, why some people earn more than others, and what determines a price in any market.
Budget the watch party
For a more hands-on lesson, give your child a small, real budget to plan your family’s next watch party. Say Ksh1,500. They decide what food to buy, where to get the best price, and how to make the money stretch across a full ninety minutes.
This builds the exact muscle that financial education research says matters most. Budgeting, trade-offs, and the realisation that money has limits are concepts best learned through doing, not through being told.
You can also introduce tournament budgeting across the entire competition.
If your household is watching multiple matches over several weeks, what is the total spend? Can you reduce it without reducing the fun? That’s cost management, a skill most adults still struggle with.
The bigger picture
The commercial scale of the World Cup also opens up conversations about sponsorship, advertising, and how companies decide where to spend their money. Who paid to put their logo on that jersey? Why? How does FIFA make money beyond ticket sales?
These are questions your eight-year-old will not fully grasp, but your 15-year-old might; the curiosity you plant now eventually grows into financial awareness. The tournament ends in July. The lessons, if you make them stick, last considerably longer.